Marram

by Leonie Charlton

  The Luton was bright white and had an electric tail lift. We’d moved it into his shed and it dripped onto the swept concrete while rain slated the steel roof overhead. We’d stood back, the three of us. There’s this three-thing coming down the maternal line, two brothers and a sister. Like Mum I have two brothers, like me my daughter has two brothers. When my daughter was born Mum said, ‘I’m so happy for you, it’s lovely to have a girl.’ I was ecstatic to have my baby girl, but remember my questioning her words. Did she really mean that? Her relationship with her own mum, as far as I could tell, had been completely messed up, as was her mother’s with her mother, and us, well, it wasn’t easy, hadn’t been easy for a long time. A lot had happened since my daughter’s birth and the van-emptying day though, and, I saw things differently. Now, almost two decades later, I could hear the authenticity in her words.

  I hadn’t known exactly what was in the van, but I was sure there’d be lots of books. Just thinking of them had lodged a shard of sorrow in my throat. It was the books I’d buckle under. Will pushed up the sliding door and there it all was, Mum’s stuff. I had to turn away as the air from the van reached me, bringing a wave of Mum-ness with it. I missed her. I could smell her. My brain knew it wasn’t her, just a load of stuff, but the rest of me didn’t. The animal sensing reaching-out parts of me didn’t.

  We’d started to move things around. Her treasures: Afghan donkey-paniers, meticulously embroidered with silk, pieces of antique pottery, a specimen of a huge centipede, stretched out behind glass, a jar brimful with iridescent Scarob Beetles, and the beads, drawers and boxes and packets and pouches full of them, her passion. Seemingly she’d never had two pennies to rub together, but we were standing in the middle of Aladdin’s Luton. She’d been a collector, she’d had insatiable appetites, not only for beads but for ‘culture’, for treasure, for travel, for men.

  ‘So much stuff,’ I said out loud. A paperback caught my eye, a picture of a full-mouthed, dainty-nosed little girl, her long hair pulled back, Frost in May. I picked it up and turned it over: ‘Set in the Convent of the Five Wounds…a lyrical account of the death of a soul…’ The girl on the cover looked uncannily like that tiny square black-and-white photograph I’d seen of Mum, pretty and pale and under-the-smile sad. I remember her telling me about being sent off to a convent when she was seven, how she was always hungry, how she’d never had enough of anything. So maybe that’s why she collected stuff.

  I picked up a doll’s head, it was life-size and made of ebony-coloured porcelain. The neck gaped where there had once been a body attached, and inside the hollow was a mechanism. I held it up towards the light to get a closer look. The eyelashes slid up and two chestnut-brown eyes looked directly down into my own.

  Lying in another open drawer of books was a jotter, the yellow cover sprouted green polka dots and a crocodile playing a game of pool. I opened it, a continental exercise book with tiny squares. On the front page Mum’s handwriting said, Morocco 1997 with Moira. I flicked to another page: his hands off me. Slimeball with bad temper. Thought it was Christmas. He was talking to me and stroking his cock. I flicked to the previous page, wanting to know who she was talking about: Well, the ‘auberge‘ couldn’t be more ‘simple’… Bare room with 3 pallets in it. Clean lavatories – nowhere to wash our bodies. The manager takes the biscuit. Nasty piece of work. Had to tell him to take… I read it out to the boys. ‘No waaaay.’ Tom laughed. ‘That was Mum for you.’ He knew better than any of us having travelled to Morocco with her, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Africa too. ‘A nightmare’, he’d said, but he’s got a big heart. So has Will. They’d both been able to stretch into being with Mum, whereas I had shrunk from it.

  Taking a deep breath I stretched my arms wide by the big-person stone there on North Uist, remembering the line in Braveheart, something about the standing stones making men hard and women fertile. I smiled. I knew what I’d leave in this place: clasps Mum had brought back from Morocco. There were three in the purse, one lapis, one jade, one jet, all set in silver. I’d splash out, leave all of them here. I got a toehold on the rock and tried to climb but my nerve failed me. There was a ridge on the rock that I could reach with my fingertips, I placed the clasps there, one two three, side by side. As I jumped down a tuft of Lichen brushed my hand. I found a small round glass bead, the colour of milky sapphire, and placed it on the celadon Lichen. I took a photograph lest I forgot just how beautiful it was, that bead nestled on the Lichen on the leaning stone.

  Going through the gate back onto the Committee Road I noticed the gatepost was hollowed out at the top. Inside was a collection of pebbles, and further down the post was a hole where the wood had rotted away. Somebody, I presumed a person, had placed a smooth round red pebble inside. It felt nice to be in the footsteps of a fellow leaver of treasure. As we walked slowly up the tarmac hill, rows of hand-cut peats radiated outwards on either side. The ditches from which they’d been taken shone dark and treacly, the vertical cut-marks a running tally of hard graft. The peats were laid out to dry in rows of four, others were stacked in tipi shapes, their edges turning lighter as they dried. Wooden posts, written on with thick black permanent marker, laid claim to each crofter’s peats: ‘DONALD JOHN’ from ‘MONACH VIEW’ had made a particularly tidy job of his.

  The road topped the highest point and dropped down gently towards the north coast of the island where an old tractor was sinking slowly into the peat. Nearby was a metal plaque on a stone telling the tractor’s story: TEF-20/Artist Liz Crichton 2015/The TEF-20 tractor transformed crofting practices on Uist. Bought originally to work on one of the Knockintoran crofts, it now lies abandoned where it was last used. The non-functional engine covers having been discarded, and with a seat made from a recycled plastic box, it is slowly oxidising, gradually returning to the earth from which the ore was once mined. The hues of its rusty iron and rubber reflect the colours of the peat bog and heather on which it sits where it has become part of this landscape.

  I liked that the artist had identified it as a work of art, which is my own response when I come across old tractors listing to the earth they once worked. Its contemporaries and successors had been out in force yesterday at the tractor rally, most of them lovingly restored and now kept indoors. Others, like this one, were slowly turning to tractor skeletons and sinking into the sinewy world of peat. I wondered about other skeletons too, of all the Horses and Ponies that had worked these islands through the centuries, where all their bones were lying. Were some under us right now, slowly feeding calcium back into the acidic ground? I put my hand out, touched Ross’s shoulder, and was glad, as ever, of his sturdy warmth beside me. How I loved him.

  At low tide we rode out to Vallay across wet sand. Ross and Chief were excited to have company. Akiko, Kathryn’s Warmblood mare, was in high spirits and happy to show off her elegant moves. Kathryn rode her beautifully, they made a stunning pair. Chief and Ross were carrying everything we’d need for the night: food, tent, sleeping bags. We were also carrying water as we’d been told finding drinking water might be a problem. As we got nearer the island the deserted buildings came into sharp focus: gable ends drawn on a bright blue sky where once there had been roofs.

  ‘If you like, I can show you where I quite often ride on Vallay. There should be plenty of time before the tide comes back in,’ Kathryn said. We both nodded, delighted to have a guide. As we left the beach we could hear Corncrakes rasping in the fields and I remembered Fiona MacRae, a friend back home, warning me not to camp this side of the island, that the Corncrakes had driven her to distraction all night long.

  A very grand gatepost, round with a turret shape at the top, seemed to mark the place where sea handed over to land. There was no sign of its partner, long since claimed by the tides. We left the stone-built house and farm steadings behind and rode to the north side across cattle-poached marshland bright with King Cups and Early Marsh Orchids. Soon we reached a crescent of golden sand scooping around seaweed-flanked skerries. Out beyon
d the rocks were Cubby’s ducks, now lifting off the water in a fuss of sun-wrought silver. Shuna and I caught each other’s eye and smiled.

  ‘This is a great spot to camp,’ Kathryn said. ‘You can watch the sun go down over the sea.’ We got off the ponies and undid the saddlebags, unstrapped the tent, left everything in a pile above Tràigh Shimìlih. Then we followed Kathryn and Akiko west through the dunes to the next sandy bay. A smell of cucumber, strong and fresh and sweet, followed, and I wondered if it was algae of some sort. Akiko hunkered down on her haunches and slid down the dunes, walked into the sea up to her belly, brave and at ease in her environment. Meanwhile it took a lot of persuasion to get Ross and Chief past the white wavelets at the tideline. Then when we got into deeper water they spooked as the waves slapped their stomachs and rushed ashore. We all laughed. Leaving the beaches we rode through grassland towards the west end of the island, the ponies started tossing their heads and sneezing. ‘Must be the pollen from all that clover,’ Shuna said. It felt like we’d been spirited to the land of milk and honey.

  The ponies spotted the Highland stirks before we did and halted. Heads lifted, stock-still, they stared at a herd of about thirty young Highlanders, horns shining amongst a mixture of cream and dun and red Cattle. When they saw us, they drifted towards us, slowly at first, then a few broke into a loose trot.

  ‘Let’s just walk quietly down here, out of sight,’ said Kathryn, pointing towards the beach on the south side of the island. ‘If we go out of sight they’re bound to get bored.’

  The ponies felt electric. There is nothing like a potential stampede to stir up a flight animal, but the stirks lost interest, and we sedately followed the bays that scalloped their way back towards the farm buildings.

  ‘That looks like Angus,’ said Kathryn, ‘coming to check the cows.’ She was pointing to a vehicle driving across the sand from North Uist. Shuna had been in touch with Angus MacDonald, who owned Vallay, months before. He’d been very welcoming, encouraging us to come and camp with the ponies. The midnight blue Mitsubishi came to halt in front of us and Angus stepped out smiling, shirt sleeves rolled up.

  ‘Ah, so you’ve made it,’ he said, eying up the ponies, ‘and it’s yourself, Kathryn, your horse will be glad of having the company to ride out with.’

  After a few minutes of chatting Kathryn said, ‘I’d better be going then, before this tide comes in. Have a great night, and get in touch tomorrow. Maybe we could ride round Udal.’ She pointed to the peninsula that Anne had told us so much about. ‘I’m up for it if you are,’ she added, ‘and remember to take care with the tides tomorrow. Don’t leave it too late. When it comes in it comes in fast!’

  With that she and Akiko trotted off and it seemed mere seconds had passed before they were tiny in the distance.

  ‘I see her out on the horse, but I’ve never actually spoken to her. Can you believe that?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve known her boyfriend, Angus, his whole life. Beautiful horse she’s got there.’

  ‘How come you’re so keen on the horses and so welcoming?’ asked Shuna. ‘That’s very unusual for a farmer nowadays.’

  ‘I like the horses. And my daughter, she loves horses, that’s what she works at, away down in England. You could say she’s educated me. And I like to see people enjoying the place. Come on, and I’ll walk up with you and show you where the water is.’

  As we walked back towards the roofless farmhouse he pointed out the old cottages over on our right, and the walled enclosures that he used as cattle pens. ‘Two hundred cattle I have out here, you know. Great cattle land. They’re all pedigree Highlands. A lot go to Germany and Denmark. I cut all the silage here, got so much last year I’ve a heap left over to finish off this year. It’s a fertile place this.’ He explained how he and his wife, Michelle, had recently bought Vallay after farming it as tenants for fourteen years.

  ‘I love this place. Even though I’ve bought all this land, I’m still a crofter at heart. I want people to enjoy it. Someday I’ll do up the houses. I trained as an agricultural engineer and worked on civil engineering projects in the Uist.’ He paused. ‘But I’m a crofter, that’s what I am.’

  By now we’d reached the farm steadings. We could see that some of the buildings had recently been re-roofed in aluminium. ‘Here’s a good stone trough, plenty of clean water,’ Angus said. Ross sank his nose in, taking a long drink, and I realised with a pang of conscience that he’d not had fresh water all day. We untacked the ponies and let them wander off, spoilt for choice in a land of plenty. I topped up my water bottle, drinking water wouldn’t be problem after all.

  ‘It’s many years since we last used that,’ Angus said, nodding towards a steep-sided sheep dip. ‘There used to be sixty people living here. The steading was built in the sixteen hundreds. At one time that was the farm manager’s house.’ He pointed towards the house we’d passed. ‘There was also a schoolhouse, a butchery, dairy, smithy. Look, there’s the pigsties. Aye, this place had it all. Later, much later of course, there was the big house built up there, Vallay House, built in the early nineteen hundreds.’ Set away from all the other buildings it sat alone on the skyline, a shell emptied of all its grandeur but still telling a story.

  ‘That was some place in its day,’ Angus added. Our imaginations travelled back through time. Snipe drummed over the marshland nearby. ‘We lost a daughter, you know,’ he said. He told us about Ellie who had died of cancer while she was at university, her indomitable character, her positivity right to the end. How much she’d have wanted something good to have come out of it all. ‘That’s why we started “One Million Miles for Ellie”. Have you seen it on Facebook?’ We shook our heads, both of us making a mental note to donate. ‘I’d better be getting back ahead of that tide. My mother will be out tomorrow to check the cows, keep a look out for her.’

  He walked back to his truck carrying his and Michelle’s loss, the barely imaginable agony of losing a child.

  We placed the saddles inside the doorway of the old farm manager’s house. ‘Just in case it rains,’ Shuna said. A Starling arrived with a beak full of tiny Worms. She perched on a wall nearby before flitting towards us. We were clearly in her entranceway. Dare I, daren’t I, she seemed to be saying. She flitted off, she daren’t. Her nestlings were too precious to risk betraying their whereabouts.

  The tent was up, mats inflated, sleeping bags laid out. We’d eaten delicious soup made with noodles and fish, Tabasco and miso. We put more wood on the fire, wood that we’d collected back at the steadings that had been discarded when they re-roofed the sheds. I picked up the half-bottle of Jura Superstition and poured another peaty dram. The north-westerly breeze lifted ash and smoke from the fire. Gulls called as they fed off the sea coming in over the warm sand. In the furthest distance we could see St Kilda, a small cone of mauve enticing on the horizon. The tide was coming closer, waves slapped noisily against the skerries. I rubbed my hands, still damp and chilled from when I’d gone down to the sea to wash the cooking pots. The water had felt deceptively warm in comparison to the dropping air temperature. The sun was sinking in an orange glow behind slivers of cloud. Seagulls began to drop down onto the shore, crying their bedtime banter.

  ‘It’s after ten,’ said Shuna. ‘Shall we walk out to the point to watch the last of the sunset?’ Across the machair Primroses glowed like lemony stars. As we headed over the rocks to the point we disturbed a lone Goose, who took off and landed splashily on the sea. A Seal rolled roundly alongside him. We sat down, rocks apart, lost in our own thoughts. I brushed my hand across the Sea Pinks next to me, petals Rizla-dry against my palm. On the turning tide the gull chatter quietened. The sun burned a dent in the sea and slowly dropped into it.

  Walking back to the tent, our faces and fingers stiff with cold, three Fairy Terns flew by, their tails ribboning through the plaited sundown sky.

  DAY TWELVE

  Leaving Vallay

  Shuna was moving about outside the tent.

  ‘Mor
ning, what time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Half eight,’ she replied. ‘I had a text from Kathryn, sent at midnight, saying she hoped we were watching the sunset, the best she’s ever seen here. Beady, I think we may have gone to bed before the party started!’

  ‘But we saw the sun go down.’

  ‘Yeah, but the colour show must have started after that. I did wonder,’ she added, ‘when I went out at 4am for a pee the horizon was on fire. Really sweet, Kathryn’s invited us to stay with her tonight, rain’s forecast. She’s on her own, Angus is away working.’

  We’d talked about staying two nights on Vallay, but if rain was coming in it would be a treat to be in a house, and last night had been so perfect, it would be hard to beat.

  The three Terns from last night skittered by, all pointed wings and forked tails and chattering noisily, so close I could make out the flash of orange on their beaks, the tiny stab of black at the tip. I stood up and headed to the shore, crossing the sand to the huddle of rocks covered in seaweed. When I put my hand down to steady myself Bladderwrack slipped under my palm. Looking closer at the fronds of seaweed, on each one a mid-rib was visible and decorated with air sacks like small green olives. Oystercatchers pipped at me while I watched a canary-yellow Sea Snail take close-in suckery steps, stretch by shiny stretch. The magic of being down on this level, how much we miss as our heads go about our days all the way up there in the air, so far away from our feet.

  I stepped onto the body of dry rock, where clumps of Sea Pinks seasoned the stone, and walked carefully to the end where it met a milky sea. It was a clouded-over day and St Kilda was nowhere to be seen. The rock I was standing on was black, marked with splashes of dove-grey and old-gold Lichen. I would leave the pottery fish bead here on the rocks, and the next spring tide would draw it away. A friend of Mum’s in Galloway had made these pottery fishes for her thirty years previously. Mum tended to stay clear of ‘craft’, seeing what she did as ‘art’, but this little pottery fish, with its blobby gold spots and clumsy yellow outline, was surely craft, and had somehow slipped through the net. I squatted down, laying it on the rock, and yes, it belonged. Its spots were the same colour as the Lichen, its body the very same green-brown as the Bladderwrack below.